Bryn
Mawr Classical Review 2001.02.16
Michael Wedin, Aristotle's Theory of Substance: The
Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2000. Pp. x, 482. ISBN 0-19-823855-X.
$55.00.
Reviewed by Ian Bell, Department of Philosophy, University of
Richmond (ibell@richmond.edu) Word count: 2201
words
A difficulty that has long confronted scholars of Aristotle's
Categories and Metaphysics is the apparent
contradiction between their respective accounts of primary
substance. In the Categories, a primary substance (prôtê
ousia) is the sort of thing that is in no way predicated of anything
else: primary substances are the likes of Socrates, Callias, and
other individual plants and animals (at least). When one reads the
Metaphysics, however, it seems as if Aristotle has changed
his mind. Aristotle's explicit statements about prôtê ousia suggest
that it is not the individual as a whole but rather its form and
essence (ti ên einai) that counts as a primary substance. Wedin's
important new contribution to the literature devoted to this problem
argues for a compatibilist account of the Categories and
Metaphysics theories of substance. In the Metaphysics,
the substance of the Categories (what Wedin calls a
"c-substance") retains its "ontological" primacy as the subject of
predications: the primacy of the form and essence is a new kind of
"explanatory" primacy. Primacy in this sense belongs to the form
because the latter explains the substantiality of
c-substances. Hence, far from dropping out of the picture,
c-substances serve as the explananda for the Metaphysics
inquiry into substance. Wedin's conclusions will be of particular
interest not only to scholars directly engaged with the question of
the compatibility of the Categories and the
Metaphysics, but also to those interested in the role of
causal explanation in Aristotle's metaphysical project.
Wedin's argument occupies ten chapters. The first three are
concerned specifically with the Categories, the fourth
directly addresses the problem of the compatibility of the
Categories with the Metaphysics, and the remaining
chapters are aimed at constructing an account of Metaphysics
Zeta that will show how it is compatible with the Categories.
Briefly, Wedin's account of the Categories is as follows.
The Categories, Wedin argues, contains a "theory of
underlying ontological configurations for standard categorical
statements" (12), an account of the ontological implications of the
various kinds of categorical statement. It should thus not be
surprising that Wedin argues that this treatise is a more systematic
work than is commonly acknowledged, beginning with his
interpretation of the first chapter as introducing synonymy in order
to use it as the foundation for the system of categories. Chapter 2
addresses the debate between Ackrill and Owen (and others) as to
whether the things that are "present in" but not "said of" other
things are individuals or universals, defending a refined version of
Ackrill's interpretation aimed at preserving the position that such
entities are at least nonrecurrent. This conclusion is important for
chapter 3, which expounds the theory that (on Wedin's view) the
Categories is intended to provide. Our ways of talking about
the world commit us to a certain picture of what sort of things
exist and of the relations in which they stand. An important
component of this picture is that everything that is either said of
or present in something else ultimately depends for its existence on
something that is neither said of nor present in anything else, that
is, on a primary substance. Aristotle's examples make it clear that
the primary substances are individuals such Socrates, Secretariat,
Madame Curie, and so forth.
Chapter 4 introduces the problem of the compatibility of the
Categories account of primary substance with that of the
Metaphysics by discussing the reasons why various
interpreters have maintained their incompatibility. There is no
doubt that the Categories and the Metaphysics differ
significantly in their treatments of substance; the crucial thing
for Wedin is that none of these differences amount to full-fledged
incompatibility. Wedin's principal (though not his only) target here
is the account of substance proposed in various places by Frede and
Patzig, according to which the Metaphysics replaces the whole
individual with its form as the basic subject for predications
(129). Thus in the Metaphysics the form of a sensible
substance becomes primary substance in the sense that the individual
as a whole constituted primary substance in the Categories.
Wedin criticizes the philosophical arguments that Frede and Patzig
take to support this view as well as a more textual argument due to
Christopher Shields.
Having addressed some prominent arguments for incompatibility in
chapter 4, Wedin is in a position to begin his own compatibilist
account of the Metaphysics in chapters 5-10. The exclusive
object of Wedin's attention in these chapters is book Zeta (7),
excluding chapters 7-9 and 12, which Wedin takes to be later
additions and so outside the scope of the original "canonical"
chapters of Zeta. The main object of Wedin's discussion of the early
chapters of Zeta is to argue that the "what is substance?" question
in Zeta should be read not as inquiring into what sorts of things
are substances (i.e., as a "population" question), but as inquiry
into the nature of substance and specifically the character of what
Aristotle calls the "substance-of" things. Thus the discussion of
the various candidates in Z3 aims to assess the suitability of each
as the substance-of a c-substance, not their suitability as
candidates for c-substantiality.
Wedin sees Z4 as introducing a new criterion for primacy in what
he calls the "New Primacy" passage (the heart of which is at
1030a7-14), where Aristotle concludes that not everything has a
definition but only those things that are primary (prôton), whose
formulas are stated as not predicating one thing of another.
Otherwise put, nothing that is not a genous eidos (1030a12) will be
primary or count as an object of definition. Wedin devotes
considerable argument to the position that genous eidos should be
rendered not as "species of a genus" (a traditional rendering) but
rather as "form of a genus", and so to the conclusion that Z4
explicitly introduces the explanatory primacy of the forms (and so
the essences) of sensible substances. Part of Wedin's argument for
this position construes the "impredicability" condition alluded to
above as excluding predicating the differentia of the genus:
Aristotle cannot be referring to a species of genus here in part
because the impredicability criterion does not permit the
genus-differentia predication to enter into a substance's form or
essence (240).
Moving on to Z6, Wedin construes the identity of primary
substance and essence demanded there as a condition of the
explanatory power of essence in its capacity as the substance-of
c-substances. If the "form of a genus" were not identical to its
essence, it would suffer an unacceptable "dilution" of its
explanatory power. The essence that was posited as explanatorily
primary would turn out to be dependent on something else for what it
is and so is no longer as credible a candidate for the role of
substance-of. Another criterion for "substance-of-ness" is
introduced in Z10-11: in order to be the substance-of a c-substance,
form must be "purified" of matter. In contrast to some who allow the
form of a substance to include high-level functional (or proximate)
matter, Wedin argues primarily on textual grounds that Z10-11
demands that the form contain neither functional nor what Wedin
calls "remnant" matter. The reason for this exclusion is found
ultimately in Z17, where the form is shown to serve as the principle
that transforms low-level matter into functional matter and so to
make the matter "be" the c-substance whose matter it is (441-52). If
the form is the cause of the transformation of low-level matter into
functional matter, it cannot itself include functional matter on
pain of making the explanandum part of the principle that
explains it.
Apart from the conclusion that form must be pure, Wedin finds in
Z10-11 the implication that form must be complex and that in its
capacity as an explanatory entity it must somehow carry
universality. As is well known, Z13 seems to cast doubt on both
characterizations of form and serves as the primary evidence for
those who maintain that primary substances must be particular forms.
While avoiding the temptation to enter into the fray of the
particular forms debate, Wedin seeks the preserve the possibility
that form is universal by interpreting Z13 as endorsing what he
calls "weak proscription." Unlike strong proscription, which
maintains that no substance may be a universal, weak proscription
maintains only that anything predicated universally of a c-substance
(in practice, of a group of c-substances of the same species) cannot
be the substance-of that c-substance (374). This interpretation is
put into service later when Wedin discusses Z17. Since form is
predicated not of a c-substance but of its matter, and, since
the Z13 proscription applies only to something predicated of the
c-substance as a whole, Z13 does not necessarily rule out the
universality of form (426).
Whereas Z10-11 implies that the form will have parts and so must
be complex, Z13 ends by concluding that if substances are not
composed of universals--or more generally of other substances that
exist in actuality--form will be simple and so not definable
(1039a14-20). Aristotle promises to address the aporia created by
this argument later (a22-3), which Wedin takes to refer to
Aristotle's account of the parts of substances in Z16 (1040b5-15).
Wedin takes the Z16 passage to advocate what he calls a "Dual
Complexity": just as c-substances have parts which exist in the
composite only potentially, so their forms will have parts
corresponding to the parts of the composite, which exist in the
form only potentially (cf. esp. b10-15).
Wedin brings his accounts of the various parts of Zeta together
in his discussion of Z17. In addition to addressing questions
peculiar to Z17, Wedin aims to show how the characteristics assigned
to form and essence in the previous chapters contribute to its being
an explanatory principle for c-substances. The explanandum is the
substantiality of c-substances, that is, what Wedin calls the
c-unity of matter that would otherwise be not a substance but a
heap. In order to be the sort of principle that can explain the
c-unity of a material substance, form must be pure of matter, and be
something of a fundamentally different logical type from the matter
it unifies. Furthermore, as the cause of something structurally
complex, form too must have the sort of structural complexity that
corresponds to the complexity of the substance it unifies. Form is
primary substance in the sense that it possesses this explanatory
power, which leaves c-substances in possession of the ontological
primacy assigned to them in the Categories.
This contribution to the literature on Aristotle's account of
substance is valuable for a number of reasons. Wedin's thesis is
both important and intrinsically plausible, whether or not one
ultimately agrees with it. No less valuable (and harder to
appreciate from a description of the book's main theses in a short
review) is the philosophical analysis of the Zeta texts presented in
its support. In the more than 400 pages of the main text Wedin
offers detailed and often compelling analyses of principal texts in
the Categories and his "canonical" Zeta, and of the
philosophical implications of the positions he finds in them. The
book will thus likely hold considerable appeal not only for
Aristotelian scholars but also for analytically trained
metaphysicians with an interest in Aristotle. There is also to be
found astute criticism of some leading alternative interpretations
of these texts, especially those of Frede and Patzig.
The downside of Wedin's emphasis on the analysis of individual
texts is a tendency to leave unaddressed certain important questions
concerning the central books as a whole. For instance, Wedin simply
appeals to the now-reputable status of the view that Z12 is an
insertion to justify his leaving it out of his canonical books (343
n.1). This decision seems rather hasty given that Z12 bears directly
on the question of the compositionality and definability of form,
and given that Wedin is happy enough to use evidence from Z12 in
support of his reading of genous eidos in Z4.1
More seriously, Wedin never explains why he regards the whole of Eta
as dispensable for his account of substantiality: once again, there
are important passages in Eta that bear on issues he discusses (in
addition to H6, over whose omission Wedin expresses regret, one
might instance especially H3.1043b23-32 on definability and
compositionality). The approach through the analysis of specific
texts tends to downplay the importance of context, and Wedin's
tendency to take every text as expressing Aristotle's considered
view on an issue discourages questions about the dialectical
character of parts of Zeta.2
Thus in reading Z4 Wedin gives the impredicability condition a wide
interpretation according to which it also forbids predication even
within the category of substance, which together with an appeal to
Z12 serves as evidence that the genus does not enter into the Z4
conception of essence. While I agree that this is ultimately
Aristotle's position, I am doubtful that this is what Aristotle
really means impredicability to entail in the context of Z4. To the
extent that Zeta is dialectical, one might expect some statements to
be first attempts at stating a position--subject to later refinement
or clarification--and thus to be vague, ambiguous, or even
contradictory of positions espoused elsewhere.
Criticisms aside, it is clear that this is an important book.
Wedin has given us a careful, detailed, and insightful analysis of
Zeta that will amply repay the careful study it demands.
Notes:
1. Wedin recognizes that the
insertion of Z12 is not merely fortuitous, but maintains that if it
is an insertion the canonical books should have a consistent story
to tell without it. If one grants the stylistic evidence for
regarding Z12 as an insertion, one may nevertheless wonder whether
it was inserted at this point precisely because Aristotle
thought it was necessary for the coherence of the central books'
overall story.
2. Aristotle's description of Z17
as sort of "new start" [1041a6-7] ought perhaps to bring to mind new
starts elsewhere in the corpus made in the wake of dialectical
discussion. See the opening lines of DA 2.1, NE 10.4,
and EE 2.1.
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